Rugby Australia tell Lions: Play Springboks down here
BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA - JUNE 22: Lions captain Sam Warburton leads the team out onto the field during the First Test match between the Australian Wallabies and the British & Irish Lions at Suncorp Stadium on June 22, 2013 in Brisbane, Australia. (Photo by Mark Metcalfe/Getty Images)
AUSTRALIA are offering to save the endangered Lions tour by staging it on neutral ground in Sydney and Brisbane this summer.
Amid mounting opposition to switching the series from South Africa to the UK and Ireland, the Wallabies' initiative protects the Lions' cherished tradition of playing only in the southern hemisphere.
Rugby Australia's alternative proposal, as tabled by chief excecutive Andy Marinos, the former Wales centre, extends to four Tests, the three against the World Cup holders plus one against the Wallabies. They are also offering the most elusive ingredient in a world gripped by pandemic – crowds.
Government warnings that Australia's borders will probably remain closed until next year did not stop the gripping Indian Test cricket series from taking place but it eliminates any realistic prospect of the usual 30,000-plus supporting the tour from Britain and Ireland. The Lions' fervent hope that fans will be allowed back into home stadia in reduced numbers this summer may turn out to be wishful thinking.
The Rugby Paper understands the Springboks prefer the UK-Irish option to the new one from Australia. “Even with limited crowds, they stand to make more money from a tour here than in Australia,'' a source said last night. “But the Aussies are confident they will fill their grounds even if nobody is allowed to travel from here. That's the magic of the Lions.''
The Wallabies also believe they can offer the Lions a warm-up match against Japan, a fixture which had been booked for Murrayfield on June 26, the day before the squad's scheduled departure for Johannesburg.
The ravages of Covid-19 have eliminated any realistic prospect of the tour taking place in South Africa as arranged. The alternative of playing the Boks at Twickenham, Murrayfield, Cardiff and Dublin, dismissed by Willie John McBride as ‘a total farce', has now run into more powerful opposition.
The Premiership clubs, whose players are likely to form a majority of the squad, are understood to be calling for the idea to be scrapped. “The clubs are supportive of the Lions and everything they represent,'' a source told The Rugby Paper. “They fully understand the difficulties over the tour. But they believe it would be totally wrong for it to be played here. It goes completely against the spirit of the Lions.
“We have to be careful that rugby at international level is not over-exposed. The demands on players are already massive without making them any more so. It just doesn't make any sense.''
Wales' plea for their six English-based players to be allowed to remain in their Six Nations bubble throughout the tournament has fallen on predictably deaf ears.
Premiership Rugby's long-established policy means that the six must rejoin their clubs during the two fallow weeks of the championship starting next Saturday.
Wales had asked for an exception to be made claiming it would ‘reduce the risk of positive tests'. Instead their cross-border contingent – Dan Biggar, Taulupe Faletau, Tomas Francis, Will Rowlands, Callum Sheedy and Louis Rees-Zammit – will report back for Premiership duty immediately after the Scotland match on February 13 and again after the England fixture a fortnight later.
English clubs have twice been fined for allowing Welsh players to appear in Test matches played outside the agreed window. Northampton paid £60,000 in the case of George North in 2013 and Bath had to cough up a similar sum in respect of Faletau four years later.
